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Question: If the matter of creation is the receiving desire, what does it mean to bestow in order to bestow? Where is the work with desire?

Answer:The truth of the matter is that the receiving desire itself works for the sake of bestowal. It supports a fellow human being, helps him, and performs various actions in relation to him.

In general, to understand bestowal for the sake of bestowal, it’s necessary to understand what reception for the sake of bestowal is. It means that I work with my receiving desires so as to use them to grow a fellow human being and perform the actions of bestowal upon him, similar to how Bina works in its AHP.

I include the receiving desires of the other into my own and fill him with everything he demands. And what he demands is Infinity. Then, with my help his desires reach an infinite magnitude, while the Lights coming to him through me grow to the infinite size of NRNHY. This is how I work, receiving in order to bestow: I make sure to give the other everything necessary, utilizing all of my abilities for this purpose and totally ignoring my own profit.

However, for this I need the upper force absent in my nature. My inborn nature lets me perform only the actions that promise me a personal benefit, whereas the actions of bestowal are totally selfless and do not benefit my receiving desires in any way. This is why I can’t perform them unless I receive the strength from the upper dimension, that of bestowal.

Hence, I incorporate the needs of the other into my desires and then through my desires I fulfill him. In general, we are talking about the desires which relate to our interconnection since the spiritual work is performed at the level of unification of the souls where we fill ourselves with the upper Lights.

So, there is an additional option: not to engage my receiving desires, but only pass all goodness from myself to the other, to participate in his fulfillment, but not with my own desires. This is pure bestowal. As a rule, these actions forestall mutual bestowal. They correct our unification. Thanks to them we annul our egoism in order to rise above it to unity. And unity itself is activated by the direct use of our receiving desires.

In this way, bestowal for the sake of bestowal is an intermediate, small, weak, “poor” state. But we have no choice: We need to undergo it since we thereby clean our desires and rise above our egoistic qualities. Without it, it’s impossible to start working with them. First of all, we have to “clean them up,” meaning to fill them with the Light of Hassadim (Mercy).[38899] From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/23/2011 on The Principles of Global Education